There are so many newborn care myths floating around that it’s hard to know what’s actually true. As a pediatrician and a mom, I’ve heard almost all of them, usually from someone well-meaning. Here are three of the biggest newborn care myths, and what the science actually says.

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Myth #1: Holding your baby “too much” will spoil them

This is probably the oldest of all the newborn care myths, the idea that if you hold your baby every time they cry, you’ll create a clingy, dependent child who never learns to self-soothe. It sounds logical. It’s also backwards.

Newborns cannot regulate their own heart rate, breathing, temperature, or stress hormones. They do it through contact with a caregiver, a process researchers call co-regulation.

A systematic review of skin-to-skin contact studies found consistent drops in infant cortisol (the primary stress hormone) after contact with a parent, along with more stable heart rate variability and better autonomic nervous system regulation. Even the smallest premature infants show measurable physiological stabilization, steadier breathing, steadier temperature and steadier heart rate from skin-to-skin contact with a parent.

The takeaway: a baby’s nervous system isn’t wired to self-soothe alone in the newborn period. It’s wired to borrow a caregiver’s regulation until its own system matures. Meeting that need consistently is what builds the secure attachment that eventually becomes real independence, not the other way around.

Myth #2: Background TV doesn’t affect a baby who isn’t watching it

This is the one that surprises most parents, because it feels like common sense that a screen your baby isn’t looking at shouldn’t matter. But several studies have looked specifically at what background TV does to the words a baby actually hears.

Home-observation research recorded parents and infants during ordinary daily routines. When a TV was on in the background, parents spoke fewer words and asked fewer questions of their child.

Background TV measurably reduced the quantity and quality of parent speech directed at the child. Since infants build language almost entirely through the back and forth of real conversation with an adult, anything that quietly reduces that conversation can reduce their language exposure without anyone noticing.

The takeaway: it’s not really about screen time in the way most parents think of it. It’s about how much a TV playing in the background changes, even to a baby too young to understand it.

Myth #3: Babies need to learn to sleep completely alone, right from the start

The expectation that a newborn should sleep independently, in their own room, from very early on is a relatively modern and largely Western idea. It isn’t universal, and it isn’t how humans evolved to sleep.

Anthropological and physiological research on infant sleep consistently points to the same pattern: for most of human history and in most cultures today, infants sleep in close proximity to a caregiver.

This package helps regulate a newborn’s breathing, temperature, and arousal patterns when that regulation is most fragile. Suggestions? the lighter aroused sleep babies get near a caregiver may be protective, not something to be trained out of them.

None of this means every family has to bed-share, since safe sleep surfaces and positioning matter enormously. But the belief that a newborn “should” sleep completely alone, disconnected from a caregiver, isn’t based on infant biology. It’s based on what’s convenient for adults.

The Bottom Line on Newborn Care Myths

Most newborn care myths exist because they’re easier for adults to follow, not because they’re better for babies. Your baby’s need for contact, conversation, and proximity isn’t a bad habit to break, it’s biology. Trust what you’re seeing in your own child. Ask your pediatrician questions, and don’t be afraid to push back on advice that doesn’t feel right for your family.